A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

This was the title of a lecture on Thursday organised by the Adam Smith Institute in Edinburgh for the day before the unveiling of the Adam Smith statue in the Royal Mile. The statue is shown above & though I haven't seen it in life yet it looks a bit overpowering for my taste.

Anyway the debate was proposed by Michael Forsyth, Madsen Pirie (Adam Smith Inst) and Andy Hume and opposed by Brian Wilson, Alex Neil and Kenny Fleming & chaired by BBC Scottish Political Editor Brian Taylor. Since it was being run by the ASI there was no doubt which way the vote was going to go but everybody enjoyed themselves (free beer & wine too).

Most fun speech was by Alex Neil, though it didn't really advance the socialist case much. Best serious speech was from Andy Hume who went into detail on how India's decision to end its 5 year plans & import substitution & let the "hidden hand" work had, as we can all see, worked so very well. Strangest misunderstanding was from Brian Wilson who used this quote

and ended it by saying "See Adam Smith supported nationalisation". He completely misread it when it is quite clearly giving exactly the justification for privatisation that Thatcher (& Forsyth) made - not primarily for the sale money but that they would be more profitable & thus ultimately pay more taxes in the private sector. How Brian Wilson, who is by no means an unthinking Labourist could so misunderstand the remark is difficult to understand. It suggests how completely the blinkers are on most politicians that they cannot see beyond the idea that dispossessing the monarch could be anything but a leftist policy. The fact that Brian gave the quote in full proves that this was an honest misunderstanding of plain English & not a politician trying to be slippery. Best point from the floor came from Neil Craig (in his opinion) when I expanded on Andy's point to say

I don't see how there is really much room to debate on this. The statistical evidence is overwhelming. For example 60 years ago Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore were poor countries as were Burma, most of Africa & Cuba. Indeed of them all Hong Kong was not only probably poorest but had just been landed with 2 million refugees while Cuba was the richest of them. Now Hong Kong is one of the richest places in the world while North Korea, Burma, Africa & Cuba are still desperately poor.

This was lifted from the pdf described here & I acknowledged to David Farrer, standing beside me, that he had uncovered this gem first.

Temperamentally my sympathy in the cold war between the US & Cuba is fully with Cuba but the fact is that free enterprise works better & it is no service to the world's poor, or indeed ourselves, to say otherwise.

Ross Finnie has a good record of taking tough economic decisions & is 1 of only 2 politicians I am aware of who said in advance that the Thatcher government's policy of shadowing the EMU was unsustainable (the other being Thatcher). He did say anybody doubting we are currently experiencing catastrophic warming was "from Mars" but a little idiocy can be forgiven.

Mike Rumbles talks well of supporting freedom (though he didn't seem so supportive when the smoking ban was being introduced) & has somewhat hedged his position on the party's anti-nuclear lunacy.

On Radio Scotland today Rumbles did indeed say that he would be in favour of less big statism & of freedom generally. He also said he would like to see decisions made more broadly by the membership through Conference (which legally is how it is done but not in practice) & have "more interesting Conference motions" (which would not be difficult).

We will see if he really is going to call for a repeal of the smoking ban, which cause ructions among the politically correct but I am sure would be popular with up to 87% of voters . If not the "in favour of freedom" stuff is just flannel. We shall see over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile numerous people who are clearly innocent have been given what amounts to life sentences. In particular I have previously mentioned Fikret Abdic the most popular Bosnian Moslem leader serving a 20 year term for opposing the al Quaeda press gangs in his native Bihac province. Abdic has become, in the western media, as much an unperson as anybody in Orwell's' book. It has been proven that no major newspaper in Britain or the US will publish a letter pointing out this injustice.. By all normal standards Abdic is the sort of moderate, pro-market, anti-Al Quaeda Moslem we are calling for to stand up & be counted. He is the one leader who is trusted by members of all communities in Bosnia, indeed the one Moslem not tainted by support of genocide. If the NATO Nazis had ever had any intention of creating a Bosnian "nation" rather than a colony he is the figurehead they would have needed. Instead they have chosen Oric & genocide.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

I have been finding it difficult to find much stuff on the net about house prices over the years & if anybody else knows a good source I would appreciate it.

However I have got this about house prices & rents in Warwickshire between 1907 & 1921 (more of the listing is given over to renting which seems to be around £25) & I have put some examples placing beside them what this is equivalent to in 2006 prices by the usual RPI calculation from the Measuring Worth site

It may be I am misreading the Gordon St & New St entries & they are just for rent. What I am assuming is the same Greens Norton Hall is currently for sale at Offers in excess of £895,000 [The Hall, Towcester Road, Falcon Manor, Greens Norton) although since it is described as merely "forming a major part of the original Falcon Manor" the price given in 1910 may be fro thewhole original building.

It does overall look like most prices would fit in the band of £40,000 to £80,000 which is a pretty good band to be sitting in today if you are buying a house. From the use of titles such as lodge & the very fact these are considered worth recording it may well be that these are largely the more expensive houses.

Our current planning system system has not altered much from the Town & Country Planning Act 1947 though before that was the first Housing and Town Planning Act 1909, to which there followed: Housing and Town Planning Act 1919, Town Planning Act 1925 and Town and Country Planning Act 1932.

I can think of no technological reason, other than this planning system which would account for house prices rising about 4 times in real terms. Indeed with JCBs, off site manufacturing & new materials it would be reasonable to expect them to have risen slightly less than the overall RPI. If so this means that something like 75% of the cost of housing is government bureaucracy & restriction of supply.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

20 years ago James Hansen a supporter of the catastrophic warming theory (& before that a proponent of the new ice age scare) testified before the US Congress that we were all doomed. His "proof" was the graph above showing that by now temperature will have risen a full degree. In fact, as the red line which denotes reality, shows we are now almost exactly back where we statred & the graph is falling uncomfortably.

This evidence he gave is considered by alarmists as one of the key points where the warming claim became official. Strangely enough the BBC, who have some new piece of warming (or as it is now called "climate change") alarmism on the box every night have omitted to have any mention of this great anniversary of the predictions they have pushed so enthusiastically (though they have got stuff about lesser known Hansens).

UPDATE Dearieme has mentioned an improved & colourised version of the graph above available at http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/06/another-assessm.html. What I also saw on that link that the lower of the 3 lines shown is the warming he predicted if we had immediately followed his advice & gone into a drastic recession. This is not far above what reality achieved & strikes me that had we followed that nostrum the BBC would be wildly announcing that the eco-fascists had been proven right - in exactly the same way the banning of CFCs & subsequent failure of us all to die of skin cancer is portrayed.

Note the stuff about microgravity experiments & the craft being able to carry its own launcher. Though there are many clear profit opportunities in space (tourism, solar power sat elites, asteroid mining) I suspect the greatest opportunity will turn out to be the ability to manufacture materials in zero gravity. In a gravity field many materials do not mix well & crystals are distorted by it. A simple example is metallic foams. Girders created full of air bubbles will be a small fraction of the weight of normal ones & a large fraction of the strength but in gravity bubbles in metal float to the top.

The range of possible materials that can be made in zero G are theoretically greater than all the materials we can currently make & it is a statistical certainty that very many of them are going to be immensely valuable. Unfortunately we cannot know which ones & how valuable till we have made them. That is why Mr Whitehorn correctly says that the greatest thing about their craft is that it will enable them to carry a payload & do microgravity experiments in zero G.

The 2 unfortunate things are; (1) that about 1/3rd of the session (inc most of the 3rd page) was taken up with concern about "environmental" effects, which Virgin were keen to placate, though I do not believe such people, really being Luddites pretending to be environmentalist, can ultimately be placated & ; (2) that this was over a year ago & little government action or media interest since then has been apparent.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Running the word X-Prize into Hansard's search facility I was disappointed to see that no MP appears to have ever used the phrase in Parliament. However I did get some magnificent stuff from these 3 pages of evidence to the Science & Technology Committee.. It comes from Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic, Dr Patrick Collins, Director of Space Future & for balance, an environmentalist.

I have repeatedly said that we should be funding a British X-Prize Foundation from the money we currently give to ESA. If this is too forward looking for British politicians we should right now put up the £50 million to allow these regular sub-orbital flights. While it could not itself achieve orbit the original did carry 2 rockets & a modern version would be much lighter because of modern materials. That means it is likely that it would be able to launch rockets able to carry small satellites. Beyond that it would certainly be able to carry experiments to test manufacturing in zero-G. The potential number of materials that can be mixed, produced as chemical compounds or manufactured in zero-G considerably exceed the total which can be done in a gravity field & some of them are bound to be valuable, for example crystals created without being distorted by gravity can be larger & stronger than any we can now produce.. Having the ability to launch small satellites & carry out microgravity experiments would be worth many times the £50 million investment even if it wasn't worth doing simply for Britain to have something to be proud of.